Voice telephone calls have traditionally been carried over circuit-based transmission facilities on the Public Switched Telephone Network (“PSTN”). However, increasingly more and more voice telephone calls are carried over the Internet and other similarly structured packet-based networks, and are referred to as Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”) telephone calls. In addition, many voice telephone calls are carried over a combination of the PSTN and the Internet.
The telephone calls that are carried over both the PSTN and the Internet require format changes as the voice data switches between networks. For example, data going from the PSTN to the Internet must be broken up into packets and the appropriate header must be created and appended to each packet. Since any VoIP implementation is constrained by real-time limitations, it is extremely important to create or convert the packet headers in the most efficient way possible.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for a method and apparatus to efficiently create and convert headers for VoIP and other packets.